Russell In Fine Voice At Buffalo’s Venu

A small crowd gathered at Venu Thursday evening for Jack Russell’s Great White. Russell, the original voice of the hard rock blues band is one of the most recognizable voices from the MTV era. Despite the size of the crowd it did not deter the band or the fans from having a blast. Russell noted a few times at how great he thought the crowd sounded.

Joining Russell were drummer Dicki Fliszar, lead guitarist Robby Lochner, newest member bassist Dan McNay who joined last year as well as Tony Montana who played bass with Great White on all the big albums and is now playing guitar. The band released a new album this year entitled He Saw It Comin’ to rave reviews.

Russell and company came out of the gate strong opening with “Lady Red Light” quickly followed by “All Over Now”, a pair of cuts from Once Bitten. It wasn’t long before they broke into the newer “Sign Of The Times” taken from his latest release. The song went over quite well and seemed to fit right alongside the Great White catalog very nicely.

Russell threw the diehards a bone when they pulled “Fast Road” out of thin air. As Russell stated afterwards that song hadn’t been played live in over twenty years. The band has been blowing the dust off old songs to really give the set list a diverse look.

There are currently two versions of Great White out on the circuit. Russell went as far to say unlike the other one, he doesn’t mind if you see theirs as long as you’ve seen his as well. Russell and his current band were cited by many as the best band at the recent M3 Festival. It’s a shame everyone in the original Great White camp cannot get along for whatever reason. At one time they were a very solid band who had always been vastly underrated. They had a cult like following that seemed to lose some steam once Russell was separated from his old band. Seeing the original voice of Great White doing the songs justice with his current band makes it a no brainer to recommend which lineup you should check out if you have the choice.